Turning an Instagram page into a multi-million-dollar business ft. Center Consoles Only

**Alan Blanco** (0:00)
And I always call Center Consoles Only basically an opportunity creation machine, because that's basically what it's done. We never made a lot of money through YouTube or monetizing views, not enough to sustain one, not to mention three people, and a growing business. Fast forward now, we've been, you know, 10 years into this, and I've probably been on more Center Consoles than anyone on the planet.

**Francis Zierer** (0:23)
Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight Podcast. My name is Francis Zierer, and that was Alan Blanco. Ten years ago, he bought the Center Consoles Only Instagram account for $7,000, and earlier this year, he raised $2.5 million for this business. The interim is an excellent example of my belief that there's really no such thing as a creator, they're just startups and media businesses at different stages of growth. So this really plots that. Later on, we will hear from Alan's two co-founders, Brian Gonzalez and Eric Taggart. And after that, Megan Lightcap, the investor at Slow, who wrote that $2.5 million check. This is the story of how a creator business that started out reposting other people's boat photos grew over a decade into, yes, a thriving media business, but also a bet to build boats and even software for the boating industry.
Enjoy.
So, Center Consoles Only. I am not a boat person. I have only been on a few in my entire life. Center Consoles is a category of boat. I had Alan give me the gist.

**Alan Blanco** (1:29)
The console, basically you got it. The console is in the center of the boat. So there's different styles of boats. There's dual consoles which have the helm on one side and a passenger on the other side. This is basically everything consolidated to the center of the boat. You have your electronics, the helm chairs, and then you have the surrounding space, for the most part, to be able to fish. That's what they were really built for, even though nowadays they've expanded into pleasure boats and everything else. And we were lucky to get into it when the real explosion of center consoles almost started. So we got lucky.

**Francis Zierer** (2:04)
So a center console is a boat where all the controls are consolidated in the middle. It's built for fishing. But Center Consoles Only, this was not always Alan's brand. His journey as a creator starts over a decade ago, before he bought this Instagram account with a different, less marketable boat related Instagram account.

**Alan Blanco** (2:22)
Yeah, got into Center Consoles Only 2016
Started into social media quite a bit before that, like 2012, with another page called Poop Deck, funny enough. So I started sharing content that just was attractive to me, like actually giving credit to everyone. It was all photography at that point, fishing, diving, boats, you name it. All high quality, and that's what started the growth, and really got me to realize what the potential of social media was back when people were taking pictures of their chicken Caesar salad at Flanagan's as a business. So thankfully, grabbed hold of it there.

**Francis Zierer** (2:57)
So four years with this Poop Deck aggregator page, with Alan reposting boat fishing and diving photography, crediting the sources, figuring out what Instagram audiences really wanted. And then in 2016, Center Consoles Only.

**Alan Blanco** (3:13)
Correct. With the Poop Deck page, we actually gained quite a bit of traction and started talking to some boat manufacturers. So I already saw the potential of it, the name Poop Deck. I own poopdeck.com, the domain for quite some time, and it gained quite a bit of value. So I was like, hey, let me, it's a word. Let me start there and see what happens.
Started growing from there, and then a gentleman named Ian Scott, younger kid, reached out to me just for some pointers on what to do, how to build this page, and I saw the Center Consoles Only handle, and it just immediately hit me. I was like, that's it. That's exactly what it was. I grew up on Center Consoles, thankfully, with my father fishing since I was young. So I've always had a passion for it. Always looked at Boat Trader magazine. Just I could name any boat, any year and approximate price range when I was like 12 years old. So it was just something that came naturally to me, and I was just super interested in it.
So yeah, picked it up. Can't take credit for actually creating the name, but we did purchase it from Ian back at that point, 2016ish. And then just hit the road running when we got that handle on our side.

**Francis Zierer** (4:18)